Republican U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville has defeated Democrat Doug Jones to become Alabama's next governor, according to a race call by the Associated Press — winning the rematch of their 2020 Senate race by a far narrower margin than last time, in what stands as the closest Alabama governor's election since 2002.
Source: Associated Press — election results, Governor, Alabama (Race ID 1019)
The Associated Press count put Tuberville on 872,445 votes (52.1 percent) against 803,468 (47.9 percent) for Jones, with 2,001 of Alabama's 2,028 precincts reporting and an estimated 98.72 percent of the vote counted. Decision Desk HQ, which projected Tuberville the winner at 11:10 p.m. Eastern Time on election night, recorded a near-identical split in its tally updated at 1:55 a.m. on November 4 — 871,814 votes (52.00 percent) to 804,647 (48.00 percent), out of 1,676,461 ballots counted at that point. The totals are unofficial until Alabama's counties canvass and the state certifies the result.
Source: Decision Desk HQ — 2026 Alabama Governor general election results
The rematch: same two men, a very different race
Alabama voters have seen this pairing before. In the 2020 U.S. Senate race, Tuberville — the former Auburn University head football coach — unseated Jones, then the incumbent senator, with 60.1 percent of the vote, in a race that started his political career. This time Jones cut that margin to roughly four points. The more than 800,000 votes Jones received are the strongest showing by a Democratic nominee for governor of Alabama in years — Alabama Daily News put his election-night total above 700,000 with counting still under way and noted it was the highest for any Democratic gubernatorial nominee since at least 2014. No Democrat has held the Alabama governor's office since 1998, and the state backed President Donald Trump by about 30 points in 2024, which made Tuberville the overwhelming favourite on paper — a status the final margin did not reflect.
Source: The Cullman Times — Tuberville wins Alabama governor's race, Nov. 3, 2026
Jones did not concede on election night. At his watch party at the Sheraton Birmingham Hotel, he told supporters around 10:45 p.m. that a concession would be “way premature,” estimating that at least 100,000 votes remained to be counted in Jefferson County, the state's most populous county, and he later said Tuberville's victory speech — delivered at The Hotel at Auburn University — was “a little premature.” The Observer reported Jones saying he would not concede until all votes had been counted. The AP call came with nearly 99 percent of precincts reporting, after the remaining vote could no longer change the outcome.
Source: Alabama Daily News — Tuberville declares victory, Jones hasn't conceded
How the counties voted
The map tells the story of the narrow margin. In Cullman County, Tuberville took just under 81 percent of the vote against Jones' 18.5 percent — the deep-Republican north running up his totals, in a county where voters also approved a local amendment eliminating property taxes for seniors over 65 by 92.5 percent. In Lee County, home to Auburn, the race was nearly even: Tuberville 27,177 votes (51.64 percent) to Jones' 25,249 (47.98 percent), with all Lee County figures reflecting 25 of 26 precincts reporting to the secretary of state's office. Jones carried Mobile County on the Gulf Coast, 69,280 votes to Tuberville's 57,597, while neighbouring Baldwin County went heavily the other way — Tuberville 57,915 to Jones' 25,060. A Democrat who wins Mobile and nearly ties in Lee County while losing the state by four points is a candidate who ran far ahead of his party's recent Alabama history — and still lost, because the Republican margins across the state's rural counties remain decisive.
Source: Opelika Observer — Tuberville defeats Jones, county results (Lee County, secretary of state returns)
From the Senate to the governor's mansion
Tuberville, Alabama's senior U.S. senator, will become the state's 55th governor when he takes office in January, succeeding Republican Governor Kay Ivey, who was barred by the state constitution from seeking another consecutive term. He did not seek re-election to the Senate in order to run for governor, and his Senate seat was decided on the same ballot: Republican Representative Barry Moore defeated Democrat Everett Wess for the open seat, according to unofficial statewide returns reported by Alabama outlets, so the state's Senate delegation changes at the same moment its governor does. Tuberville's path — a single Senate term, then home to Montgomery — was set in motion when he won the Republican primary in May, positioning him, in a state that has not backed a Democrat for statewide office in over two decades, as the presumptive governor from that night on.
Source: Opelika Observer — Tuberville to become Alabama's 55th governor; Moore wins U.S. Senate race
The Observer's account of the incoming administration's agenda lists the pressing files on the desk in Montgomery: data-center construction and the power and water questions that come with it; the state prison system, a long-running Alabama crisis; and restructuring the tax code — particularly the grocery tax, the state sales tax on food that Alabama is one of the few states still to levy in full and that both parties have promised, in different forms, to cut. Tuberville takes office in January with Republican control of the state legislature, which means the fights over those files will be inside his own party as much as against the opposition.
Counties canvass their returns and the state certifies the result; Jones' decision on whether to concede once certification is complete will close the last open question of election night. Watch for Tuberville's transition team and cabinet announcements in Montgomery, for the formal handover from Governor Ivey in January, and for whether Jones — who won a Senate special election in 2017, lost in 2020 and has now lost the closest Alabama governor's race since 2002 — turns this near-miss into a permanent Democratic organising effort in a state his party usually writes off, or whether 2026 proves to be a one-candidate surge that fades with him.